LONDON Retail tycoon Philip Green’s greed and disregard for corporate governance led to the demise of BHS and the loss of 11,000 jobs, a joint parliamentary committee said, calling the collapse of the British stores group “the unacceptable face of capitalism.”... More »
NEW YORK U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump on Saturday presented his vice presidential running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, as the man who can unify a fractured Republican party and help him bridge the gap created by the candidate’s outsider status.... More »
HARARE Dozens of Zimbabwean anti-riot police surrounded the court where preacher Evan Mawarire was due face charges on Wednesday relating to his calls for “stay at home” protests against President Robert Mugabe. Mawarire, whose social media movement has rattle... More »
SYDNEY The sharp rebound in U.S. job growth last month eased concerns that the country’s labor market had regressed, a top Federal Reserve official said on Wednesday, repeating she continues to expect gradual interest rate rises. Cleveland Fed President Lorett... More »
The 21st Century Fox logo is seen outside the News Corporation headquarters in Manhattan, New York, U.S., April 29, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Two 21st Century Fox Inc units have settled class-action litigation by former interns who said they should have b... More »
LONDON Britain’s opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn sacked his foreign policy chief on Sunday, a spokesman said, plunging the party into open conflict after Britain voted to leave the European Union. The EU referendum, which saw 52 percent of Britons votin... More »
LONDON Britain’s 2.2 million financial industry workers face years of uncertainty and the risk of thousands of job cuts after the country voted to quit the European Union, an upheaval that threatens London’s dominance of finance. The ‘Vote Leave’ campaign fron... More »
MUNICH, Germany Europe’s growing army of robot workers could be classed as “electronic persons” and their owners liable to paying social security for them if the European Union adopts a draft plan to address the realities of a new industrial revolution. Robots... More »
BRUSSELS Brexit may be an abstract idea for many Britons but for compatriots living in continental Europe Thursday’s EU membership referendum has a very real impact — especially on those working for the Union itself in Brussels. “It’s a very weird feeling, lik... More »
PARIS Gangs of masked youths smashed windows and hurled stones at riot police as thousands of people marched through Paris on Tuesday in protest at a planned change of labor laws that would make hiring and firing easier. Police fired dozens of volleys of tearg... More »
HELSINKI Finland, whose once-renowned technology sector shed 15,000 jobs with the demise of Nokia’s (NOKIA.HE) mobile phone business, is struggling to fill thousands of vacancies for software developers because it lacks people with the right skills. At the sam... More »
STOCKHOLM Telecoms equipment maker Ericsson plans to lay off thousands of staff this summer and is considering large, additional cost cuts due to slowing markets, newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) reported on Tuesday citing anonymous sources. After quarterly p... More »
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Wal-Mart Stores Inc executives touted the technology investments the world’s No. 1 retailer is making to boost online sales, during the annual shareholder meeting on Friday. Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon spoke about initiatives like ... More »
STOCKHOLM The latest disappointing U.S. jobs number has not changed the overall economic picture and gradual rate hikes remain appropriate, Cleveland Federal Reserve President Loretta Mester said on Saturday. The Fed raised rates in December for the first time... More »
NEW YORK Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, called the May employment report on Friday a “real body blow” and said it means an interest rate increase later this month is an “impossibility.” In a telephone interview, Gundlach also said the... More »
WASHINGTON The U.S. economy created the fewest number of jobs in more than 5-1/2-years in May as manufacturing and construction employment fell sharply, which could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Nonfarm payrolls increased by o... More »
MIAMI President Barack Obama warned Democrats on Friday that they need to work hard to defeat likely Republican nominee Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election but must avoid violence like that at a rally in California this week. “Strange things can h... More »
WASHINGTON – Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said a U.S. jobs report on Friday that showed the weakest hiring in more than five years proved that Democratic economic policies are pushing the country in the wrong direction. The report gave Trump ... More »
DEBRECEN, Hungary In a graveyard in Hungary, solemn contemplation gave way to frantic sportsmanship on Friday as dozens of grave diggers battled to prove they were the fastest and best in the business. Taking their places at plots selected by pulling names out... More »
ATHENS Greece’s government trumpeted a debt relief deal with other euro zone countries on Wednesday as the beginning of the end of its bruising six-year financial crisis but Greeks remained skeptical and markets were cautious. After years of austerity demanded... More »
KAMPALA Tanzania has removed more than 10,000 “ghost workers” from its public sector payroll after a nationwide audit found their fraud cost the government over $2 million a month, the prime minister’s office has said. Government officials say the payroll audi... More »
LONDON HSBC (HSBA.L), Europe’s largest bank, started laying off 840 information technology workers in Britain on Monday, the first big tranche of redundancies under a restructuring plan that will eliminate 8,000 British jobs by the end of next year. Most of th... More »
TORONTO Business got even tougher for Canada’s newspaper industry last year, data showed on Friday, with nationally distributed advertising cut by almost a quarter and online ad sales barely taking up any of the slack. Total daily-newspaper revenue in 2015 fel... More »
LONDON A London temporary worker, sent home for wearing flat shoes, has collected more than 120,000 signatures so far in a petition calling for Britain to make it illegal for a firm to require women to wear high heels at work. Reaching that total on Friday eas... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. small business confidence rebounded from a two-year low in April amid growing labor market optimism, supporting views economic growth will regain momentum in the second quarter. The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) said on Tue... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Drivers who worked for ride-hailing service Uber [UBER.UL] in California and Massachusetts over the past seven years would have been entitled to an estimated $730 million in expense reimbursements had they been employees rather than contractors, ... More »
AUSTIN, Texas On-demand ride companies Uber and Lyft suspended their services in Austin, Texas, on Monday after a stinging loss in a weekend vote where they had spent heavily to repeal a city ordinance requiring them to conduct fingerprint background checks fo... More »
The Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Byron Scott on Sunday after he oversaw the two worst seasons in franchise history, clearing the way for a continued rebuild after the retirement of all-time great Kobe Bryant. “We would like to thank Byron for his hard work, ... More »
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO U.S. Federal Reserve policymakers are expected to hold interest rates steady when they meet this week, but may tweak their description of the economic outlook to reflect more benign conditions, leaving the path open for future rate rises... More »
CHICAGO U.S. health and safety officials issued new guidelines on Friday to help protect workers from exposure to Zika, a mosquito-borne and sexually-transmitted virus that causes the birth defect microcephaly and other neurological disorders. The new rules, i... More »
SYDNEY Australia’s parliament returned for a special sitting on Monday to debate crucial labor reform bills which are likely to be blocked in the upper house Senate, leading to the dissolution of both houses and an election on July 2. Prime Minister Malcolm Tu... More »
BRASILIA Brazil’s leftist President Dilma Rousseff suffered a humiliating loss in a crucial impeachment vote in the lower house of Congress on Sunday and is almost certain to be forced from office months before the nation hosts the Olympics. Fireworks lit up t... More »
CUBATAO, Brazil On a warm September morning in 2014, the 10-man board of Brazilian steelmaker Usiminas met on the ninth floor of a blue glass tower in Sao Paulo. In the room, the board members grappled over whether to fire the company’s chief executive and two... More »
WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case on Monday probing the limits of presidential powers as the justices weigh whether President Barack Obama overstepped his authority with unilateral action to protect millions of people in the country illegally f... More »
LONDON British finance minister George Osborne said a vote to leave the European Union in a referendum in June would do permanent damage to the country’s economy, which he warned would be 6 percent smaller by 2030 than if it stayed in the bloc. The government ... More »
WASHINGTON The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case on Monday that tests the boundaries of presidential powers, confronting the question of whether President Barack Obama exceeded his authority with unilateral action to spare millions of people in the country i... More »
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. Cirque du Soleil said on Friday it was canceling shows in North Carolina over a new state law that it called discriminatory, the performance group said on Friday, becoming the latest entertainment act to take a stance against the measure. “... More »
NEW YORK U.S. business conditions are the strongest since the summer of 2014 as sentiment has recovered from a weak start to the year, signaling companies’ willingness to make capital expenditures, Morgan Stanley economists said on Friday. More investment in e... More »
PARIS French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was to meet student and youth leaders on Monday in an attempt to defuse opposition to proposed labor reforms that have triggered public demonstrations and a nocturnal protest movement in several cities. The labor bill s... More »
WASHINGTON President Barack Obama will meet with U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen on Monday to discuss the economy and Wall Street reform, the White House said on Sunday. Vice President Joe Biden will also attend the meeting. The president and the Fed c... More »
LISBON Portuguese Culture Minister Joao Soares resigned on Friday, a day after threatening to slap critics who had called him incompetent and rude. A post on his Facebook page saying he wanted to slap two newspaper columnists, followed by what was seen as a ha... More »
NEW YORK Debt may be a drag for millennials, but apparently not as much as cooking their own dinner. A survey from Citizens Bank found that fewer than half (47 percent) of millennials, those in the 18-35 age group, who are college graduates, would be willing t... More »
ATHENS Greece on Monday picked a local theater director to curate its most renowned annual summer arts festival after Belgian artist Jan Fabre quit following protests from artists that his plans excluded Greek works. Fabre resigned on April 2, complaining of a... More »
SYDNEY Australian retail sales were surprisingly muted in February, a red flag for hopes that consumer spending could offset global headwinds and keep the economy accelerating through the first half. Combined with a very subdued private-sector reading on infla... More »
LONDON Britain said on Sunday that UK steel producers must be considered for infrastructure and other government contracts involving steel supplies, as part of plans to find a long-term solution to a crisis in the industry. The government is looking for ways t... More »
MILWAUKEE Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump predicted that the United States is on course for a “very massive recession,” warning that a combination of high unemployment and an overvalued stock market had set the stage for another economic slum... More »
NEW YORK The U.S. Federal Reserve will not raise short-term interest rates more than twice, if at all, in 2016, on expectations of slowing hiring in the second half of the year, a top bond manager at BlackRock, the world’s top asset manager said on Friday. Des... More »
HELSINKI If one fist bump could endanger Finland’s increasingly stressed tradition of consensus politics, then Prime Minister Juha Sipila and a cabinet colleague may just have achieved this dubious distinction. In a nod to popular culture, a smiling Sipila and... More »
BEIJING Capital expenditure by Chinese companies fell to the lowest in at least five years in the first quarter, a private survey showed, highlighting persistent weakness in the economy even as the government ratchets up policy support to head off a sharper sl... More »
CAIRO Egypt promised tough action to restore growth on Sunday with a government program that aimed to reduce the budget deficit while protecting the poor as public anger mounts over a deteriorating economy. Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, reading out a 79-page p... More »
DOHA Qatar’s Al Jazeera broadcasting network is laying off about 500 employees or more than 10 percent of its staff, it announced on Sunday reflecting financial pressures on the tiny Gulf state due to low global prices for oil and natural gas. Most of those af... More »
ZURICH A slump in investment banking revenues pushed Credit Suisse (CSGN.S) to accelerate its cost-cutting plan as Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam admitted he had been unaware of trading positions that triggered more big writedowns in the first quarter. Switzerl... More »
SEOUL Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS), the world’s biggest maker of smartphones and memory chips, announced on Thursday that it plans to adopt a corporate culture akin to a startup, seeking to become more nimble as growth slows. Samsung’s executives wil... More »
NEW YORK Wealth managers in the United States are cutting fees, relying more on technology to give advice and reducing the minimum amounts clients can hold in their brokerage accounts, all in preparation a new rule governing how they advise retirement savers. ... More »
SAN FRANCISCO Amazon.com Inc, under pressure from an activist shareholder to disclose its policies on gender pay equality, said on Wednesday its female employees earned as much as their male counterparts, according to a survey it recently conducted. The disclo... More »
WASHINGTON/NEW YORK A bill that aims to protect babies born to mothers who used heroin or other opioids during pregnancy was introduced on Wednesday in the House as part of the government’s response to a Reuters investigation. The bipartisan measure would requ... More »
OKLAHOMA CITY Nearly 15 years since Enron’s collapse decimated the retirement accounts of its employees, hundreds of thousands of U.S. energy workers remain precariously exposed to big, concentrated bets on company stock in their 401(k) retirement plans. The s... More »
CHICAGO Denial is not just a river in Africa. It also is a powerful driver of how Americans think about their prospects for a secure retirement. A new survey of retirement confidence published on Tuesday confirms that many workers lack realistic plans for maki... More »
SAO PAULO/BRASILIA Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians flooded the streets on Sunday in the biggest ever protests calling for President Dilma Rousseff’s removal, reflecting rising popular anger that could encourage Congress to impeach the leftist leader. The d... More »
BEIJING China’s survey-based unemployment rate stood at around 5.1 percent throughout January and February, state television quoted the statistics bureau as saying on Monday. The rate is hovering at a relatively low level, and 0.05 percentage point below the s... More »
SAN FRANCISCO The Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates this week, but will likely make clear that as long as U.S. inflation and jobs continue to strengthen, economic weakness overseas won’t stop rates from rising fairly soon. That will be a big change fr... More »
FRANKFURT A former employee of Volkswagen’s (VOWG_p.DE) U.S. subsidiary is suing the company for damages, claiming he was unlawfully fired after flagging internally what he alleged was illegal deletion of data, a group of German media outlets said on Sunday. T... More »
NEW YORK Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund manager in the world, continued its efforts to transition some responsibilities away from founder Ray Dalio. The latest move, announced in a client note seen by Reuters on Thursday, was to hire Jon Rubins... More »
Bank of America Corp is hiring a new team of investment bankers who cater to midsized companies, four years after dismantling a similar business, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The precise number of middle-market bankers it plans to add co... More »
RIYADH Saudi Arabia’s plans for economic reform foresee winding down ‘jobs for life’ in an inefficient state bureaucracy and replacing them with new careers in a dynamic private sector. That’s the theory, at least. But in the short term, there is a problem: 20... More »
The 2016 U.S. presidential election may succeed where the world’s central banks have failed, but not as they would wish: in bringing back inflation through protectionism. One of the most striking aspects of the election campaign is the way in which Donald Trum... More »
LONDON Yanis Varoufakis, the self-described “erratic Marxist” who took Greece to the brink of a euro zone exit by battling creditors over the conditions for a bailout, has got a new role: advising Britain’s opposition Labour Party. The former Greek finance min... More »
BEIJING China said on Monday it expects to lay off 1.8 million workers in the coal and steel industries, or about 15 percent of the workforce, as part of efforts to reduce industrial overcapacity, but no timeframe was given. It was the first time China has giv... More »
NEW YORK Warren Buffett will release his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway Inc shareholders after a year when its stock price lagged the broader market by the most since 2009, adding to years of underperformance. The letter, due Saturday, is a must-read on W... More »
LUCEDALE, Miss Mississippi’s vast flatlands, laced with the remains of a fading industrial base, are fertile ground for the incendiary populism of Donald Trump. For the insurgent presidential candidate, there’s plenty of voter outrage to tap into here and in a... More »
BUENOS AIRES In power just two months, Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri is already facing labor unrest, with a national public sector strike planned for Wednesday as workers protest rocketing inflation and job cuts. Unions representing hospital staffers an... More »
HOUSTON It is still unclear whether the recent downturn in global financial markets will have any substantial impact on the U.S. economy, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer said on Tuesday, suggesting the episode may still pass without much effect o... More »
BRUSSELS British and EU negotiators agreed much of a reform package on Thursday to help keep Britain in the European Union, leaving Prime Minister David Cameron to settle tricky final issues, notably on migration, at a summit next week, diplomats said. After t... More »
ZURICH Credit Suisse (CSGN.VX) Chief Executive Officer Tidjane Thiam has asked the bank’s board to cut his 2015 bonus by between 25 percent and 50 percent, the Financial Times reported on Monday, after the bank posted a 2.94 billion Swiss franc ($2.96 billion)... More »
LONDON The dollar turned lower against the euro in Europe on Monday as stock markets resumed their decline, wiping out gains based on Friday’s U.S. jobs report. A rise in oil prices during Asian trading helped commodity-linked currencies like the Australian an... More »
LONDON Global markets have been in turmoil since the start of the year, with stocks and commodities prices reeling, eroding inflation and making central banks increasingly dovish – a trend that could continue with more weak economic data. China, a focus of muc... More »
TORONTO BlackBerry Ltd is cutting 200 jobs at its hometown headquarters in Ontario and in Florida in order to trim costs, it said on Friday, as the smartphone maker moves to turn around its fortunes and put more emphasis on its enterprise software business. “A... More »
BRUSSELS Proposals to protect Britain and other non-euro zone countries from deeper euro zone integration do not grant London the right of veto over decisions, European Council President Donald Tusk told EU leaders in a letter on Tuesday. Publishing the letter... More »
SYDNEY January updates on Asia’s mammoth factory sector released on Monday showed the new year began much as the old one ended – with too much capacity chasing too little demand. China was again the epicentre of disappointment as its official measure of manufa... More »
SHANGHAI China’s manufacturing activity contracted at its fastest pace in almost three-and-a-half years in January, an official survey showed, suggesting the world’s second largest economy is off to a weak start in 2016 and adding to the case for near-term sti... More »
IOWA CITY, Iowa/NEW YORK The 2016 election is shaping up to be the year of angry voters, the disgruntled Americans shaking up the establishment by fueling the presidential campaigns of two very different candidates – billionaire businessman Donald Trump and se... More »
MANITOWOC, Wis. The television documentary “Making a Murderer,” a gripping series about two Wisconsin men convicted of murder, has put this blue-collar city of 35,000 on the map, to the dismay of many residents. The wildly popular Netflix series, spread out ov... More »
SAN FRANCISCO/WASHINGTON In the U.S. Federal Reserve’s arsenal of tools the characterization of economic risks is heavy artillery, used to flag the moments when major events like the 2003 Iraq war or the near crack-up of the euro zone in 2011 make forecasting ... More »
TOKYO Bank of Japan policymakers would prefer to hold back additional monetary easing at their meeting on Friday, people familiar with the central bank’s thinking say, though global market volatility could yet force their hand. Even as slumping oil prices and ... More »
WASHINGTON The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates unchanged on Wednesday and acknowledge that turmoil in financial markets threatens its upbeat view of the U.S. economy, leaving the chances of a March hike diminished but alive. All 69 analysts... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. President Barack Obama will propose in his upcoming budget measures to help more than 30 million Americans save for retirement, such as automatically enrolling workers in Individual Retirement Accounts and making it easier for workers to keep s... More »
Al Jazeera America, the cable television news outlet controlled by Qatar’s royal family, has issued a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice, stating that it will lay off 197 employees with the shut down of its operations in America. T... More »
DAVOS, Switzerland Politicians and business leaders gathering in the Swiss Alps this week face an increasingly divided world, with the poor falling further behind the super-rich and political fissures in the United States, Europe and the Middle East running de... More »
BUDAPEST Taxi drivers in Hungary’s capital demonstrated on Monday against ride-hailing service Uber, whose growing popularity they find unpalatable amid new regulations setting a fixed tariff for traditional taxi firms that is higher than Uber’s. Taxis blocked... More »
WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday laid out a plan to help support the income of workers who lose their jobs and end up in lower paying positions, as part of a push to get unemployed Americans back to work. The proposal would offer experience... More »
LONDON Moribund. Decrepit. Sclerotic. Popular words to describe the economy shared by the 19 countries of the euro zone – but perhaps no longer apt. Very slowly – and primarily because of massive stimulus from the European Central Bank – the euro zone is showi... More »
TOKYO Japan’s Toshiba Corp (6502.T) said on Monday it will cut nearly 7,000 consumer electronics jobs after a $1.3 billion accounting scandal, in an overhaul that will streamline the sprawling conglomerate into a company focused on chips and nuclear energy. To... More »
VIENNA Austria’s Vice Chancellor said on Monday that Austria could not accept more than 100,000 migrants a year, following a pledge from its larger neighbor Germany to limit arrivals. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them fleeing conflict and poverty i... More »
BRASILIA Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s key ally in Congress is certain it can head off an impeachment threat, but in return the party demands a radical change of policy course to pull the economy out of its deepest downturn in 25 years. Senator Eunicio ... More »
CARACAS Employees at a Pepsi-Cola Venezuela plant have been freed by the government, which had detained them for halting operations for lack of raw materials, Empresas Polar, owner of the local Pepsi (PEP.N) division, said late on Sunday. “Pepsi-Cola Venezuela... More »
LONDON One of the Bank of England’s policymakers who is considered most likely to call for higher interest rates believes the need for tighter monetary policy is “slightly less immediate” because of slow pay growth and falling oil prices, a newspaper reported.... More »
WASHINGTON U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders unveiled a climate change plan on Monday that seeks to end the country’s dependence on oil, coal and nuclear energy and could pressure party front-runner Hillary Clinton. The Vermont senator’s plan... More »
LONDON The outlook for British manufacturing next year has darkened, with output and new orders deteriorating at rates not seen since 2009, according to an industry survey on Monday that warned of slowing growth both at home and abroad. Manufacturing organizat... More »
BERLIN Volkswagen has denied a report saying its chief executive and chairman were urged on Sunday by its third-largest shareholder to reduce the influence of VW’s powerful unions as it battles to overcome its emissions scandal. CEO Matthias Mueller and Chairm... More »
